The best air purifiers on the market can truly transform the quality of the air you breathe at home. These handy appliances have a plethora of benefits, from reducing exposure to airborne pollutants to eradicating bad smells.
“The best way to improve indoor air quality is to reduce pollutants at their source and to ventilate with clean outdoor air, but portable air cleaners can be an effective supplement.” Tim Carroll, U.S Environmental Protection Agency
To help verify these claims, we put the best air purifiers on the market to test at home in a number of situations. This meant that we could get a true impression of how air purifiers work to improve the health of you and your family.
The air quality readings we gathered help show how effective each air purifier is – and, crucially, whether its performance lives up to the manufacturer’s claims. We’ll also indicate whether each air purifier has gained an Energy Star certification, which shows whether an appliance features a certain level of energy-saving efficiency in order to keep your bills down.
When you’re picking our which would be the best air purifier for your home, there are a few important aspects that can easily be overlooked. It’s crucial that your chosen appliance is easy to live alongside. This is why we’ve included information on how loud, large and easy-to-operate each of these air purifiers are. This means that you can make an informed decision before you decide to spend your money.
Best air purifier for all-around use
Levoit Core 400S
This is the best air purifier for cleaning the air throughout your home.
Energy star certified: No | Height: 20.5 inches | Diameter: 10.8 inches | Weight: 11lbs
The Levoit 400S performed best to remove airborne particles in our at-home testing, capturing at least 99.5% and up to 100% or particles during testing.
Its sleek and stylish cylinder shape with a neutral colorway makes it an easy addition to any room, whatever the décor, while a color-coded display gives users a great visual on air quality at any given moment.
The Levoit 400S scores an impressive 5 stars out of 5 on Amazon, with 85% of reviews giving it the full 5 stars. Negative reviews cite problems with the VeSync app and a lack of sturdiness in design. Positive reviews praise the purifier’s accuracy in tracking 2.5 microns and its ability to manage and remove unpleasant odors, dust and pet dander. Customers particularly like the look of the Levoit 400S, although some say it feels a little big. They also appreciate how quietly the purifier runs on its lower settings.
The air purifier is light and features indented handles at either side, making it easy to move from room-to-room.
A companion app that users can download gives useful data on air quality and allows users to schedule and time the air purifier to fit round a busy family schedule. The quietest setting is barely discernible, while the most powerful setting still clocks in at just 52 decibels.
Stylish, quietly powerful, and with an intuitive, easy-to-use Smart interface, the Levoit 400S is our top pick of air purifiers. It could be the ideal appliance for you if you’re looking for an effective air purifier that’s big on performance but doesn’t blow the budget.
- Read the full Levoit 400S review
Best air purifier for style
Dyson Purifier Cool
The best air purifier that will also look excellent in your home.
Energy star certified: Yes | Height: 41 inches | Length: 4.72 inches | Width: 8.7 inches | Weight: 11lbs
Sleek, stylish design Powerful air purifying capability Connectivity and smart features Expensive outlay Can get noisy at elevated levels
The Dyson Purifier Cool is one of the most stylish air purifiers on the market. Its unusual design marks it out as a talking point in any room, while simple but genius extras, such as a magnetic remote control, take it a step up from your average air purifier.
The Dyson Purifier Cool scores an average of 4.2 out of five stars on Home Depot. Negative reviews cite problems with the sensors’ baseline readings, poor fan quality, and noisiness when in use. Positive reviews praise the purifier’s ability to improve the symptoms of allergy sufferers, as well as removing unpleasant odors. Customers particularly like the integration with smart devices, the auto setting and the purifier’s stylish design, with one user commenting, ‘It looks like a piece of art’.
The purifier also doubles up as a fan in hotter weather, although this isn’t as powerful as some users would like. Users can activate, schedule and monitor their purifier via the Dyson app, allowing them to set fan speed, timers and check air quality whether they’re home or away.
A clever LCD display flicks between icons that show air quality data in real time, while an auto-mode senses air particles and adjusts fan settings to suit.
The Dyson Purifier Cool’s high price tag may be too expensive to suit everyone’s budget, but its stylish, sleek design and smart, connected functionality is impressive.
- Read the full Dyson Purifier Cool review.
Best air purifier for performance
Blue Pure 221
Simply the best air purifier for improving your air quality.
Energy star certified: Yes | Height: 21 inches | Depth: 13 inches | Width: 13 inches | Weight: 15.5lbs
The Blue Pure 221 is designed to cover areas of up to 600 square feet, making it an excellent choice for homes with larger rooms or office spaces. With three power settings operated with a one-touch button, simplicity is the key for this purifier.
The Blue Pure 221 scores an impressive 4.8 out of five stars on Home Depot, with hundreds of five-star reviews from satisfied customers. Positive reviews praise the purifier’s performance, saying it helps them sleep better, feel less congested, and enjoy cleaner air quality in their home. Many users love the unit’s design and are happy with how quiet it can run. Negative reviews cite problems with performance, the expense of replacing filters, and some complain that the higher settings are too noisy.
Our at-home tests found the Blue Pure 221 to be consistently better than all the other air purifiers we tested. Despite its lack of Smart technology, it out-performed purifiers at almost double the price.
Some users may be put off by the unit’s weight and bulk. But it’s still a stylish machine that’s thoughtfully designed. Plus, its customizable fabric pre–filters make it easy to pair the unit with any home’s color scheme.
Our verdict? A dependable work horse of an air purifier that puts performance above presentation. Plus, we like the fact that it’s energy star certified and cheap to run.
Are air purifiers worth it?
Air purifiers are worth their cost for many users thanks to their ability to filter out some of the pollutant particles out of the air within a home. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans spend approximately 90% of their time at home, where “concentrations of some pollutants are often two to five times higher than typical outdoor concentrations”. This means that having an air purifier on hand to filter out some of these pollutants can be beneficial.
In fact, those who suffer from medical conditions that arise from these pollutant particles (such as asthma) can even find that air purifiers help with allergies, helping to reduce symptoms.
Air purifiers can also work to supplement proper ventilation and air conditioning within homes when it comes to smoke and smoke smells. While it won’t remove every pollutant in your air at home, an air purifier is a worthwhile purchase to contribute toward bringing the overall level of pollutants down.
To get the most out of your air purifier, there are certain features to look out for as you shop. Tim Carroll from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency told Live Science: “Choosing the right air cleaner will depend on the type of pollutant the user is targeting. In general, to filter particles, choose a portable air cleaner that has a clean air delivery rate (CADR) that is large enough for the size of the room or area in which you will use it.
“The higher the CADR, the more particles the air cleaner can filter and the larger the area it can serve. Most air cleaner packaging will tell you the largest size area or room it should be used in. Portable air cleaners often achieve a high CADR by using a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter.
“To filter gases, choose a portable air cleaner with an activated carbon filter or other filter designed to remove gases.
“Consumers should be careful not to select an air cleaner that produces any ozone, which is a lung irritant. Both the California Air Resources Board and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers maintain lists of air cleaners that have been tested and shown to emit little or no ozone”.
Air purifier benefits
While we can logically understand that air purifiers can help sanitize the air in our homes, how does this translate into real-life benefits for you and your family? Well, removing polluting particles from the air benefits your health, as it prevents biological impurities such as mold and bacteria from circulating in the spaces you live in. Meanwhile, if you have an allergy sufferer in your household, it can also help them manage their allergy season symptoms as well.
It’s not yet clear whether having an air purifier within the home can prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, there is however some evidence to suggest that HEPA filters, found within premium air purifiers, can help to remove certain viruses from the air.
Tim Carroll from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency told Live Science: “Portable air cleaners have the potential to improve indoor air quality for any person who uses them properly. The longer the air cleaner runs, the more air it filters.
Note that it is always important to reduce or remove the sources of indoor air pollutants and to ventilate with clean outdoor air. Filtration does not replace the need to control pollutants and ventilate.”.
Molly Cleary
Molly is a writer for Live Science and Top Ten Reviews. She covers a range of subjects including fitness, health and homes.
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